Two different graphs. Both happen to be published at Ars Technica, with one of them coming from a different source. Seemingly completely unrelated, but when you ponder the waterfall of recent lawsuit-related news, these two graphs suddenly tell all there is to tell. These two innocent little graphs illustrate why Apple is attacking Android so ferociously.

Well, the difference is that back in the day, iPhones were only available on one (suck-ass) carrier in the US, which pushed a lot of people (including myself) towards an Android phone. This isn't the case with tablets. Also, I'm sure that some Android phones being a lot cheaper than iPhones is another factor that pushed people in Android's direction, but very few people seem to be taking much interest in the cheap Android tablets (and for good reason, as many of them are crap).

Well, it doesn't help that Android devices typically have better hardware specs than iOS devices too. Apple simply doesn't rev the hardware enough to keep up with the multitude of Android devices.

For example, when Google/HTC released the NexusOne it was a couple millimeters thicker, had a lot smaller hard drive (only 512 MB Flash), and a 6 MegaPixel Camera when compared with an iPhone4 of the same time frame, which while having a lot larger hard drive (upto 32 GB flash), only had a 2 MegaPixel camera. The two phones were, for the most part, on par in many other respects. It wasn't until the iPhone5 - nearly a year later - that the iPhone became more competitive with the NexusOne, where the only difference (other than OS) was the size of the hard drive; and Google quickly turned around offered the Nexus S through Samsung with a 16 GB flash - still not the 32/64 GB Apple offers, but it does for the most part eliminate the issue.

Of course, that is only comparing Apple with one other line of phones - the ones controlled directly by Google; leaving out the rest of the vendors and the other phones that may have had worse and better specs during that time frame as well.

Simply put, Apple is not churning out revisions fast enough. But could one vendor supporting a single OS be able to do so against multiple vendors supporting a competing OS?

I think the PC Windows vs. Macintosh era shows us that the answer is simply no, it cannot.

That's not to say that Apple won't continue to offer a good product for a niche market - they'll be around a lot longer than Microsoft will be. But they're not going to control the market like they originally envisioned - just like with the Mac. So long as they want to control the hardware and the software, their software platform will be doomed to a niche market.

If they continue to control the software, while letting others put it on their phones through special agreements that give them some say of the phones, then they will certainly be able to have a larger market.